


Red Plague, Blue Plague

by Anonymous



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Caves, Gen, Light Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 06:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19969681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Bereet and Peter kept in touch after their unusually eventful one-night stand, and one day she asks him for a lift. The Guardians, since they're all living in one ship, all join the trip.





	Red Plague, Blue Plague

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



"There she is!" Peter said, pointing, and the crew approached a Krylorian woman. To Drax, she did not appear to show signs of being hearing-impaired, so he assumed it was mockery that led Peter to speaking more loudly the closer they got. "That's my friend Bereet. Who I owe. And who is fleecing me, right now, at this juncture, for what I owe her."

"A _lift_ ," Bereet told Peter in a quiet and rapid way as if she were not convinced she should say it at all, and then turned a smile on the rest of the crew that looked polite, friendly, and nervous.

Drax disliked her, but didn't bother to mention it. He scanned the other people at the docking port refreshment station, grunting acknowledgement when his name was mentioned in introduction. At any moment he might encounter someone who would aid in his ultimate goal of vengeance. It was a small comfort to meet Gamora's gaze as she did the same, but he ignored the feeling for the moment as he was distracted by the sight of the park next to the refreshment area. It had flora and fauna both, people walking their pets and letting them graze.

"Rocket," he said in a quiet and rapid way, but he had reasonable intent: to be covert. "How would I know if any animals in our surroundings might be intelligent, and a danger to us?"

"If they're carrying a 7th Gen Quarcannon," he whispered back, "that'll be the best hint. And you gotta let me know, 'cause I need parts from that one!"

"I would have been able to reason that myself," Drax grumbled. "But I will look closely at any weapons..."

"Yeah, it's cool, I can hold a normal, welcoming conversation, don't you guys worry about things like that," Peter said, which seemed accurate enough, but an odd non sequitur. Drax felt slight concern, as he had learned that Peter was in numerous ways an easy person to worry about, but Peter turned his back to the crew with a sigh and focused on his friend. "Bereet, you ready to hit the road?"

"As ever!" she said. "I've packed recording equipment, snacks, medical kits--actually, I've been ready to go for two days already. I've been looking forward to this exhibition for, oh, an age."

*

"I _know_ art exhibitions. What the hell kind of exhibition is this?" Rocket said. "There are supposed to be drinks, or what's the point?"

"I am Groot!"

"Are you _sure_?" Drax said, still hopeful for a clearer answer on that matter from the sapling.

"Don't start with that!" Rocket demanded. "Yes, he is Groot too, and that's not even what he was saying! He's getting all poetical about the water in this frigging cave. Which does not count as a drink, let's all be clear on that."

Bereet made a noise of distress. "But water could do such damage to the paintings..."

She was an artist by trade and inclination, Drax remembered. But she conveyed nothing via tattoos, only abstract art - it was a disappointment to remember that aspect of the facts each time.

"Groot's got a sixth sense for water," Peter told her. "I wouldn't worry about it - it'll probably be way underground. Or above us."

They all glanced up, some to the stalactites far above, some to the tube-shaft of the elevator that had brought them down through the bedrock. The journey downwards had become dark very soon.

"I don't understand," Drax complained.

"Shocking," Peter murmured.

"The drawings _do_ seem awfully abstract," Gamora said, studying paintings on the nearest wall.

Drax scoffed. "That is not what I don't understand. If water isn't even readily available in this cave, it's a terrible place to stay long enough to make all this art. The painters used colours on a spectrum that we can see, which now needs light to illuminate it - why did they come down so far in order to paintings they wouldn't be able to see easily?"

"Peter, no questions," Bereet said, touching his shoulder in passing as she wandered across the cavern to another point of illumination.

"Ohh. Oh, it's one of those kinds of places--sure, OK. Hey, Drax? Don't ask too much about how this happened, all right? The answer might be more than we can handle, you know how it is."

He didn't. The subject of that last part was hopelessly muddled - "it?" With the ending on a note of nonsense, the rest was easy to ignore too.

Drax wandered too, muttering to himself. The paintings did seem to tell a story, even though the iconography was unfamiliar to him. "The proportions of some of the depicted people are ridiculous. Completely unlike the others, and the people populating this planet now. And this! Why bother to convey an encroaching threat if you can't decide if it comes from the centre of every crawling creature or from every visible star?"

"Um. Drax?" said Gamora. "It looks like a storm, that's all. It probably commemorates a notable disaster - but ... I mean, it's just a storm."

"Perhaps I've become an artist without noticing," Drax told her, and a snort marred Gamora's warrior dignity. "It's clear that whatever it was, wherever it came from, it reached far enough to linger in the depths. We should make sure that Groot doesn't go find any of the water. Even my new skills can't decipher what would happen then - though it seems likely that the sickness would linger too. We would have to ask Peter about the meaning of the music to clarify things further."

"Ha! I knew you liked it," Rocket said sidelong to him. It had turned out that Rocket was of the dancing sort, contrary to Drax's expectations, and apparently also to his own, which he still hadn't got over.

"There is no music," Gamora said.

"I will not call it a heartbeat," Drax said, feeling insistent on that score. "I will not. Not even to ask whose it is. If it's music, then that's simply all it is. But I don't see ... even with all that there is to see here..." Lit up between miles of darkness, many pinpricks of vision, of colour. "Why would a warning not be clearer? _Is_ it a warning?

"A promise?

"A predic...?"

Bereet was an artist. Bereet was an ordinary-looking person, the sort that Drax had shouldered past on his quest many, many times, and had rarely needed to look twice at. Bereet, it occurred to him afterwards, occasionally travelled the galaxy by accepting lifts from pirates bound to only themselves. It was not too surprising that she was not always as shy as she at first seemed.

When he opened his mouth in a daze to speak, she raised her reasonably sized rock and hit him in the head again.

*

He made it very clear that he would not have lost consciousness if something hadn't already been trying to suck consciousness, as well as the concept of self, out of him already.

Everyone asked him to stop being so very clear. Not even in general. Just on that particular subject.


End file.
